Random Thoughts on Driving

Driving through Shenandoah has a different feel to it than taking the Parkway in spite of your path picking its way along the same mountains; perhaps this is because a different group of surveyors laid out the Skyline Drive. Different artistic choices. As well, some of the difference can be attributed to the trees ( reforested ares that have not caught up to the Parkway) and wide vistas over the valleys that have been heavily settled for years that seem nearly absent further south.
I found driving through Front Royal after leaving the Park a useful reacclimation for the interstate to follow. As Washington is little more than 60 miles away from the end of the Park, and our maps and schedule were not up to the less harried routes we prefer, we chose to rip along at 65 mph along with everyone else and get it over with sooner. The first forty minutes were actually not bad, but the next twenty five on the beltway, were, by the standards of driving to which I have recently become used, hell.
Alexandria, where our hotel is (we will not be driving into Washington), has no old cars in it save ours; as far as I can tell, we seem to be a category of one. The very little bit of it we have seen is a sea of new or nearly new vehicles, all of them zipping along to somewhere important.